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The Only Rule is Success

Really? Success is a rule and not a goal? A way and not an end? Another mystery of the universe revealed!

The Only Rule is Success – 3 Lessons I Learned
by Talece Brown

The Only Rule is Success.

Sounds easy, right? Not always, but it is something you can trust.

I was taught three things growing up:

1) You can be anything you want to be if you are willing to work for it.

2) You have a gift and talent, learn your skills.

3) The questions are what is interesting, the answers are all around you.

My life began on a beach in South Texas, with a family from a farm and a college town in Arkansas. I always knew what I wanted – to get to LA, and the first thing I realized was how was I supposed to get to LA from Padre Island?

The second thing I realized was, that we weren’t rich. At age four I also realized that we were on the wrong beach and that I couldn’t drive to the promise land of LA.

I was in the swimming pool one night, staring up at the palm trees, explaining the problem to God and he replied…

“You are right where I want you, I have a plan, now get to work”.

Now let the success lessons begin.. You can work anywhere. It doesn’t have to be LA. So let’s take this in acts of my creative journey and what lessons of success I’ve learned…

Act I: Voice Acting.

I was on the air at the local rock radio station in Fayetteville, Arkansas and acting in plays at the University of Arkansas while in high school. I have a voice, it’s my ‘day job’ and I was playing leads in the classics, so I was learning. Using my voice on the radio led me to Dallas, TX (a little closer to LA! where I was able to book more stage, commercials, voice work and television news. I ended up with ABC Network Satellite Radio and NBC News. I learned that day in and day out you have to plug along, no day will ever be perfect. But learn from your mistakes – no one in our industry wants to hear how you nailed it, it’s the screw ups we love and learn from. Let me explain…

There are a few things in Dallas that are sacred. One of them is the Kennedy shooting. At age 19, very early one morning while rapidly typing out my three times an hour news break copy, I had to lead with a story about a Kennedy reenactment that had shut down traffic. Open mic, live, I stare at the copy in front of me and see an incredibly long word consisting of lots of a’s and s’s, I was trying to say ‘assassination’. After saying, “ass, ass, ass, uh sass”, my mind went blank. I spoke outloud into a stream of consciousness about Kennedy that certainly shouldn’t have been said on air. Headphones on, I could hear the sound of glass breaking as coffee cups were dropped in the break room down the hall. In the circle of windows surrounding me, the ‘Gods of the Industry’, the morning jocks, the sports anchor, the engineer and the producer arose from their seats and turned their gaze from the monitors to me shrinking behind my mike. But, I picked up and recovered confidently moving to the next story. I didn’t let it roll over me and I moved on.

Success Lesson #1.

If you are doing voice work, relax. You can’t do worse than what I did. Have fun, use your talent, love the talent around you. We have all been there….